Professional sports are part of the matrix of sustainability problems affecting the world today. This problem is especially concerning for American sports, where everything is done in excess. The unsustainable practices associated with professional sports are environmentally damaging. Due to the fact that it is an environmental issue, the stakeholders affected are everyone in the world. We are all on one planet together and we need to share the resources we have. Unfortunately, professional sports are causing an extreme amount of waste and resource use in very concentrated areas, leaving the rest of the world helpless. There are four main problems contributing to this issue: stadium waste, travel emissions, commercialization and advertising, and promotion of capitalistic and profit based thought process. The solutions to this problem are quite complex due to the fact that sports have many traditions associated with them and there are many people that have a strong interest in keeping the professional sports organizations the way they are.

Professional sports games draw massive amounts of people to the huge stadiums that have been created to display the events. This concentration of people combined with the amount of consumerism and food sales that occur at stadiums results in an incredible generation of waste. According to an internet article written about Busch Stadium, home of the St. Louis Cardinals, the stadium sells 540,000 hot dogs, 181,000 pounds of nacho chips, and 32,000 gallons of nacho cheese in one year (Busch Stadium Facts). These are just a few of the products that the study chose to measure. In reality, there is much more waste associated with each of these products because the food is served in disposable containers that generate a huge amount of paper product waste. For the full list of usage facts, you can follow the link below:

http://stlouis.cardinals.mlb.com/stl/ballpark/facts/index.jsp

There are other sources of waste besides food at the stadiums, including cleaning products and bathroom supplies. The same article also stated that the stadium uses 7,315,200 feet of paper towels and 15,373,800 feet of toilet paper each year (Busch Stadium Facts). The problem from this material waste generation is amplified by the fact that a lot of the waste is simply left littered on the ground in the stadium after the game is over. The people that do throw out their waste do not often recycle the materials properly. This excessive amount of waste is piling up in our landfills which makes the resources in those products no longer useful and which can have dangerous effects on our water supplies. There needs to be a change. We cannot continue to add this much waste from stadiums like these all over the country.

Another main problem with professional sports is the travel emissions from both fans and teams. In the United States, the teams play against opponents from all over the country. This means constant airplane travel, which has some serious emissions and fossil fuel usage associated with it. The fuel efficiency for the average plane in 2009, according to the US Department of Transportation, is about 0.52 miles per gallon for domestic flights and 0.28 miles per gallon for international flights (RITA, 2010). The full table of information relating to airplane efficiency and use can be found through this link:
http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/2010/html/table_04_08.html
By analyzing the trends over the years in the given table, it is pretty clear that efficiency has been steadily increasing. However, the overall consumption has been steadily increasing as well. Also, the price per gallon of airplane fuel has been rising too, making this an economic issue as well as an environmental one. The average airline fuel cost per gallon over 2011 is $2.88 (RITA, 2010). Another table providing information on the economic side of air travel can be found through this link:

http://www.transtats.bts.gov/fuel.asp

The large amount of air travel associated with professional sports is helping to increase these trends in airplane overuse. To use Busch Stadium as an example again, more than 3 million fans attend games at the stadium and more than a million of those come from outside the state (Busch Stadium Facts). This means that fans are traveling great distances to come watch these professional sporting events. Whether they are traveling by plane or by car, there is a very large fuel consumption and emission associated with their travel.

The third problem contributing to the unsustainability of professional sports is commercialization and advertising. This problem has been growing for a number of years, and is now at the point where you cannot look anywhere in a stadium without seeing an advertisement. The reason this is an issue is because advertisements promote and lead to increased consumerism. Consumerism is already a huge problem in American culture and contributes to increased waste and the treadmill of production occurring in industry right now. Rather than use the old products that we own, we choose to buy new products and throw the old ones away. This is mainly because of advertising schemes that make you 'need' their product to be 'cool' or to 'perform better'. Advertising has become such a big influence on culture that it is now completely intertwined, especially with the younger generations. As the Media Awareness Network put it in an online article "It's getting harder to tell what came first: youth culture, or the marketed version of youth culture. Does the media reflect today's teens, or are today's teens influenced by media portrayals of young people?" (Media Awareness Network, 2010). The professional sports industry is such a desired target for advertisers because of the vast audience exposed to it. Banners can be placed all over the stadiums, on the playing surfaces, and in some cases on the players jerseys. These advertisements are not only seen by the fans at the game, but also by the millions of viewers watching the sporting event on television. The energy consumption from those television viewers is just another contributor to the list of unsustainable things associated with professional sports. These companies make deals with the sports franchises and broadcasting companies to get there advertisements seen by as many possible consumers as possible. It is all about the money for both sides. This process is driven by a completely capitalist mindset. Another target for advertising companies is to go after the individual athletes. Endorsement deals with the most popular athletes help bring the 'cool factor' to a product by the simple fact that people want to act like someone they look up to and respect. Anything that the athlete uses in a commercial will then be much more likely to be used by consumers. An example of an individual athlete being used for advertising is NBA star Lebron James. He has major advertising deals with Nike, Sprite, and McDonalds among others. He is an incredibly influential figure because there are so many people that look up to him and want to be like him. This means that when he drinks a Sprite on a TV commercial or laces up his new pair of Nikes before each game, there are millions of people watching him that get the image that Sprite is cool, or that they need the newest style of Nikes to be cool. One way to show the incredible impact that sports have on consumerism is to analyze the effects that removing a sport for a season can have. For example, the NBA is currently experiencing a lockout and product sales are taking a hit. It is estimated that the sneaker industry “could lose up to $500 million in sales if the 2011-12 NBA season is wiped out” which is “roughly 25% of the $2 billion basketball sneaker market”. Marshal Cohen, the chief industry analyst at the worldwide market research company NPD Group, says "The impact would be huge. Out of sight, out of mind. If the players are not on the court, and the kids aren't thinking about them, they're not going out and getting their shoes" (McCarthy, 2011). The culture of consumerism grows with every influential commercial produced. The professional sports industry is creating too many opportunities for these influential advertisements and is therefore a sustainability problem.

The fourth contributing factor to the sustainability problem of professional sports is the promotion of the capitalistic and profit based thought process. Professional sports contribute to the popular ideal that money is the only thing that matters. The athletes make ridiculous amounts of money and still have contract issues because they want more money. The richest franchises tend to have the best teams. This sends the message to all sports fans that money is power and money is the only thing that matters. The CEOs of professional sports organizations are big business executives who are trying to maximize profit in every aspect of their job. A study on corporate social responsibility, CSR, showed "that professional sport executives approach CSR in a community-oriented, collaborative, and strategic manner in order to achieve their ethical, philanthropic, and legal responsibilities” (Sheth & Babiak, 2010). This means that the executives are just getting by with enough corporate social responsibility to keep a positive image so that their teams will continue to attract fans. It is all about keeping the fans happy to make sure they continue to attend the games. One article put it quite simply by saying “the NFL is a for-profit industry that seeks to maximize its profit by providing top quality entertainment for its fans” (Pantuosco & Stone, 2007). The thought process that money is the only thing that matters is a sustainability problem because it makes all of the executives extremely competitive. When executives are competitive in the search for profits, they are not likely to choose to do what is right over what will make them more money. This leads to using the cheapest energies (fossil fuels), the cheapest containers for food products (disposable paper products), and the least amount of public service possible to maintain a positive image (as shown above). These practices are damaging to the environment through emissions and resource waste. They cannot go on like this forever; we will eventually run out. That time is approaching more quickly with every day that this waste cycle is allowed to continue and it must be stopped before it is too late.

There are a few ways to start to eliminate some of these unsustainable practices in the professional sports industry. One thing that is starting to be done is switching over to renewable sources of energy. With the gigantic amount of energy that is required to power a stadium, it is extremely important that the electricity is generated by a renewable source. Jonathon Kraft, the president of the New England Patriots, purchased “2,400 megawatt-hours of renewable-energy credits over four years, through a deal with electricity provider Constellation NewEnergy of Maryland.” Regarding the decision, he said, “This not only reduces our carbon footprint, but could help build awareness that other organizations have an opportunity to make a similar choice for the environment” (Johnson, 2007). Whether this was a decision made to gain positive publicity or whether he is truly concerned about the environment, the move to renewable energies is extremely important. Also, the possibility of starting a new trend in sports franchises choosing renewable makes this decision a revolutionary one whether or not it was for the right reasons. A possible solution to address the amount of food and product waste generated at stadiums during games is to use less disposable food and drink containers. This would require a shift towards reusable containers which would need to be collected and washed after each game. It may seem like too much effort to go through, but it would provide an influx of new jobs for the working class. Stadiums could place large collection bins at the bottom of each section to make it easy for fans to toss their used containers into. One simple way to get this trend started would be to create a promotional deal for a special reusable cup that can be brought to each game. If the fan brings back their cup, they get their drink at a lower price. This would increase sales and sustainability so everyone benefits. A solution for the issue of travel is much more difficult to find. It could be suggested that teams only play against the teams that are closest to them. This would lower team and fan travel. However, this is not really a reasonable proposal because it would break traditions, limit competition within the league, and take away fans’ rights to travel to watch their team play. Overall, there is a lot of work to do to make professional sports more sustainable and the biggest factor in being successful with this is by raising awareness and changing the way of thinking among everyone in the community. We all need to take responsibility for our own contributions towards waste and emissions and do our best to keep them as minimal as possible.